Reality for dreamers
by XoX-queen-bee-XoX
Summary: Tonight he's not saying anything. It's not a game anymore, though. It's more of an inhumane, life shattering torture, so it kind of makes her glad he isn't speaking.


**Hey all, this is my first fic in awhile because I've been extremely busy and as such it may not be of a super standard :P. Currently it's a one shot, but I suppose if people liked it and wanted more I'd be happy to expand. It's in response to a prompt which unfortunately I found awhile back and now can't find again so I can't give credit to the person to whom credit is due for this story, sadly, although I can tell you it wasn't completely my own invention. the angst and generous helpings of self loathing are however entirely by me. I hope you enjoy, or at the very least, don't hate.  
>Bee<strong>

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><p>It's late, the sky the pitch black colour of midnight outside the hotel windows. She's been lying there for four hours, unable to sleep even though she knows she needs to. Unable to shut her mind down for even the briefest second because she's too busy thinking about <em>him<em>.

Not the one she should be thinking about either. She makes herself sick.

When she's had enough of repositioning herself to try and find a cool patch on her sheets she gets out of bed. The glass of the window provides welcome relief for her heated skin. It does absolutely nothing for her thoughts, still racing faster than the beat of her heart when she saw him in the lobby that morning. Saw _all_ of them.

They picked her up and dropped her as they chose, when they needed some of that pure creation and yet he still had the nerve, the fucking audacity to look at her with an expression like _she_ was letting _him_ down? Like she wasn't let down every time she realised it really was just a job to them.

She isn't at all that surprised to hear a knocking on the door to her room, although she should be. Instead she's only surprised (and a little bit loathe to think) that when she hears it, it's not the groom she wants to be on the other side.

Opening the door, they stand and stare at each other for far too many seconds, before she wordlessly turns and returns to the window. She doesn't expect so much of herself to think that this silent reaction is a goodbye, a sign to leave. If it was, she wouldn't have the left the door open.

Naturally he follows her into the room. In a fashion that's only one of her personality traits when he shows up, she suddenly becomes acutely aware of every minute flaw in the immediate area, from the rumpled Egyptian cotton sheets on her bed to the articles of clothing and underwear strewn on the floor.

"I think about you all the time," he says, as though that's an appropriate introduction to a conversation. A conversation with a soon to be married woman. Sooner than she can even fathom at this point.

A derisive chuckle escapes her lips and despite her better judgement, the sentence with which she replies is more a force of habit than an answer. "Do you want a drink, Arthur?"

It's something she's been doing a lot of herself lately. Without waiting for him to answer she grabs the bottle of half-finished champagne from off the perfectly polished counter of the hotel's kitchen area and fills up two glasses.

He takes it dubiously, without drinking any but he takes it nonetheless. She's downed hers in two seconds, swallowing down the fizzing liquid like a drowning man, sucking in oxygen. Then she's refilling and doing it again and when she's trying for a third, he reaches out a hand and stops her.

The feel of his long, lithe and yet thrillingly powerful fingers on her bare skin sends shocks right through her body. Hating herself a little more, she jerks out of his grasp and closes her eyes. Undeterred, he lets her go and steps away. The distance makes no difference; his presence in this room is still larger than life. Larger than _her_ life.

"Don't do this."

"Do what? Drink champagne?" She chuckles and sets the glass back down and tilts her head at him, feigning obliviousness even though they both know what he means.

"Don't do this to me." There he went again, back on same selfish kick that he had been on during the job eleven months ago. The job when she'd first told him. Told him about Peter. _Who the fuck is Peter_, the only response she'd received.

"Don't do this to _you_? Fuck you Arthur, you don't get to come in and out of my life whenever you feel like it and then act like you have some kind of claim on me. You don't get to destroy my whole perception of life and reality and just about every fucking other thing in the world and then tell me that I'm hurting _you_ by trying to rebuild that. You don't, okay?"

Then there's silence, heavy and smothering and despite her tirade, when she looks at him now – really looks – she still can't get past his hands, or his expression or that suit which he's still wearing at midnight. What is it about him that intoxicates her so much?

He's leaning against the edge of the small wooden table, surveying her with eyes that she still can't read so rather than try, she turns and downs her third glass of champagne in three minutes. The fizzing in her brain is something which she's uncommonly grateful for.

"Fine." He's still cool, calm and collected, like the stupid fucking point man that he always has been. "Do it to me then, but don't do it to yourself."

She wants to snap at him, swear her head off, tell him she hasn't got the slightest idea what he's talking about. Except it's not true. They both know that.

"I think about you all the time," he repeats and this time, rather than thinking of herself as a soon to married woman – less then twelve hours now – she thinks of herself as a lover scorned who wanted something she never quite got. Who wanted something that was now being dangled in her face. And like a moth to a flame, she was letting it draw her in.

"I think about seeing you again." He stands back up, loosening his tie off slightly. She wonders if it's because he's having as much trouble breathing as she is. With every step he takes away from the miniscule table, he gets a step closer to her. A step closer to shattering her resolve – like she even has any in the first place.

"Think about touching you." He reaches back out to her wrist this time, long, strong fingers brushing against her like lightening in her blood. And then, with his lips against her ear, his breath hot against her skin and his tone a little bit tortured, "Think about fucking you."

She can feel every inch of her body so acutely; the desperate grip of his hand on her heated wrist, the rubbing of his unshaven cheek against her own, scratching at her, the tips of two of the fingers on his right hand brushing on her leg through the oh so thin fabric of her satin nightgown. The soft, satin nightgown that Peter bought for her three months ago, for their anniversary.

"Damn it." She jerks away, closes her eyes, inhales sharply. She's panting now because having him so close to her makes her unable to function properly. This is what she wanted three years ago. This is what she wanted before she fell in love with someone else.

"You can't do this to me now. You… you just can't," she finishes with her eyes still closed, praying to God he'll move away and praying to something else entirely that he won't. "I've built this, now. This is what I need, this is real. You, Arthur, you come and you go and when you go, you take _everything_ with you. I can't be left with nothing, again. Not again."

He doesn't offer an explanation, nor does he offer any kind of denial. She knows it's because there isn't one, but her will power isn't strong enough yet to firm her resolve. He moves back in again, as though this speech was somehow an affirmation and she doesn't stop him. His fingers have stilled on her nightgown, but they haven't moved away. His lips, beside her ear are breathing heavily, like he's slowly becoming intoxicated by the smell of her, the taste, the presence.

"He's a good guy," she says, desperately, but somehow – and don't think she doesn't hate herself for it – her hands have moved to the front of his suit, and she's not pushing him away. Her tiny hands just sit there and _feel_ him, remembering what it's like when it's been so long she's almost forgotten.

"I'm not the good guy, Ariadne. I never have been, but I want you more than he does." He breathes into her hair, seeming to draw in the smell of her like some kind of drug he can't get enough of. She shudders, and his fingers move again, because just like the Arthur of two years ago, the Arthur of Berlin, of Kenya, of Hong Kong, he can't get enough of touching her. "God, I want you."

It only takes two seconds to start it, and she marvels later about how something so momentous can come to pass in such a short space of time. That an action taken in the heat of the briefest moment can stick with you for a lifetime. But of course, anything to do with him has a habit of sticking with her.

In those two seconds, her hands turn from resting lightly against him to reaching for the buttons on his shirt, tugging them open aggressively, with a hunger she hasn't acted on in a long time. Her back's pressed into the sharp edge of the bench, digging into her like a knife into her back. If she was in a more fit state of mind, perhaps she might find that slightly ironic.

Arthur's hands are searching too, tugging at the night gown, roughly grazing her bare legs as he yanks it up to better reach her skin.

"Don't," she mutters, when he moves in to kiss her, his eyes burning with an intensity that terrifies and excites her at the same time. "I can't," she adds, as though this is an explanation. As though keeping her lips out of this makes it any better.

"Okay." His breathing races as she rubs at his naked torso, revelling in the feel of the skin that she's missed so much. Then he's kissing her neck, sucking at her, biting, hurting her and she fucking loves it. Her skin is burning, her insides freezing cold and boiling hot at the same time. She wonders, not so intelligently, if he that's what he feels when he pushes two fingers up inside her. She moans and pants and writhes into him and feels like a dirty whore the whole time.

Three years ago he would have said something now. He would have leaned in even closer and broken the contact with her neck to mutter something about how she was 'so fucking wet', like he did that time in Cape Town before she told him to fuck her from behind so she could watch in the floor length mirror.

Tonight he doesn't say anything, just works in and out of her ruthlessly and grunts into her throat when she unzips his pants and rubs him insistently to try and even out the playing field. It's not really a game anymore though, and both of them know that. It's more of an inhumane, life shattering torture, so it makes her glad he isn't speaking.

His fingers pull out of her again and this time rather than pushing back in, he grabs her round the thighs and pulls her up so he can start fucking her. It's hard and violent and just as full of frustration as she expects. It's just as mind blowing too, as he rams into her and she thrusts back and they grunt and groan like animals.

"I'm coming," she whispers against his heated skin, almost ashamed to be saying it. And she does too, coming viciously and shaking around him, digging in her nails and clenching her teeth to keep from screaming.

To his credit, he doesn't look overly proud of having done this to her when they've finished. She doesn't know if it's good or bad that he seems to hate himself as much as she does. It's not as much of a relief as she might have thought. Like anything could be a relief when she just knowingly burnt her future down around her ears.

When she wakes up the next morning he's gone. She's not surprised; she knew he would. Not only gone from her room, but gone from the hotel, from the city she would guess if she knows him well enough. The only thing left of him is a sick feeling in her stomach and a bruise the length of her back where the bench dug into her.

A sick, sociopathic part of her mind thinks she could still go through with it. She could go down to the bridesmaids' rooms right now, get dressed, smile and act as though nothing happened. She could still walk down to that chapel in two hours and follow through with this normal life that she worked so hard to set out for herself. She could still marry Peter.

She doesn't, of course. She goes down to his room and tells him she can't do it, that's she's not really in love with him. He cries – something she's never seen before – and worse, she doesn't. She's trying to do the right thing, she tells him. Who it is that she's doing right by, she's not sure. She likes to think it's both of them.

Then she goes back up to her room and packs her suitcase with the few things she brought up to Seattle with her and leaves. Leaves like Arthur did to her, although she knows he's not gone for good. He'll be back some months from now, with talk of a job and unspoken promises of more of what she got last night. She should be angrier than she is, but at the end of the day he was right. Being settled down would never work for her. Reality never did suit a dreamer.

**Fin**


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